Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Imaginary Evils

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on September 1st; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Oliver Goldsmith wrote, “Don’t let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.” And the celebrated curmudgeon H.L. Mencken was much more specific about who it was that was most likely to disregard Goldsmith’s advice: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” One of the most popular imaginary hobgoblins of our time is “human trafficking” usually conceived of as “sex trafficking” despite the fact that the term is used to mean just about anything politicians and others who profit from the panic wish it to mean. I beg your indulgence of my love for quotations just once more today, in the form of experimental psychologist N.R.F Maier’s statement of what is now called Maier’s Law: “If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.” Try to keep all three of those quotes in mind while reading about UK home secretary Theresa May’s recent antics:

A “modern slavery” bill that tightens the laws on human trafficking will be introduced in an attempt to eradicate an “evil in our midst”, Theresa May has announced. The home secretary said that prosecution rates for human trafficking were still “shockingly low” across Europe…New trafficking prevention orders…will be introduced, allowing the courts to impose restrictions on the ability of offenders to own a company, visit certain areas or work with women or young children after their release…A “modern slavery commissioner” will be appointed to ensure that the government and law enforcement agencies are tackling the problem vigorously. It is also possible that the bill could establish new classes of crime aggravated by a link to human trafficking. This would allow higher penalties to be imposed for offences involving, for example, drugs or prostitution, if they were part of a trafficking operation…The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: “Labour have been calling for stronger action against human trafficking since 2010…considerable concerns have been raised about trafficked children and young people ending up in children’s homes and then going missing and being trafficked again”…

Well, if there’s anything Britain needs it’s certainly “new classes of crime”; after all, we can’t have the UK lagging behind the US in the number of ways for the police to lock people up, steal their property and trample on their rights. As for Ms. Cooper, perhaps she should’ve paid more attention to what the Guardian edited out of the story I discussed last week: the fallacious statement that “[of] children…identified and taken in by social services, 90% will be tracked down by their traffickers and disappear from care…” But as Maier pointed out, inconvenient facts must be discarded. A rational mind would conclude that the failure of “authorities” to discover vast numbers of “traffickers” meant that the predictions were wrong in the first place; a politician instead concludes that they just aren’t trying hard enough. For example, there was Operation Pentameter Two in 2008:

The UK’s biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country…a Guardian investigation…suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media. Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all…

But now Ms. May says that a massive operation using every single police force plus some, and involving hundreds of raids, just wasn’t good enough (despite the fact that then-home secretary Jacqui Smith hailed it as “a great success”). And then there was “Project Acumen”, which was specifically designed to generate higher numbers than Pentameter:

Project Acumen’s findings are based on interviews with just 210 migrant sex workers at 142 premises in England and Wales…NONE of [them] had been kidnapped, imprisoned or subjected to surveillance. NONE were established as sold. ONLY ONE had been subjected to violence, and NONE had been threatened with violence. At least 202 had known when recruited they would be expected to work as prostitutes. Of the remaining eight, some may have been misled about their location rather than the work…NONE suffered “threats of denunciation to the authorities.” NONE had been given false information about migration, or about the law or attitude of the authorities…

Obviously, that wasn’t trying hard enough either. Maybe they just weren’t dumping enough money down the “trafficking investigation” loo, or being aggressive enough in their raids; but what about £500,000 expended on brutal tactics when everybody knows there are hordes of “trafficked women” about, namely the Olympics? Surely that’s enough for Ms. May? Apparently not:

An elite Metropolitan police squad has come under fire in a highly critical report commissioned by the London mayor, Boris Johnson…The report [called “Silence on Violence”] accuses officers of a “heavy handed” approach to brothel raids and of failing to find victims of trafficking…It criticises the police performance and estimates that they have a success rate of less than 1% in finding trafficking victims during brothel raids. Police had predicted an increase in sex trafficking in the runup to the Olympics, but they have admitted that they have failed to find any evidence of a rise in the five Olympics host boroughs…despite a cash injection of £500,000 from the Government Office for London to specifically target the crime…

A new study on migration and trafficking in the UK sex industry has challenged the idea that trafficking is the main factor in trapping people in exploitative and abusive employment…[Dr Nick Mai] has found that a majority…[are] not…forced or trafficked into the profession…[and that] difficulties in exercising rights…were more likely to come from the issue of official immigration status than from forced labour. Many…workers…[enter] the industry because the alternative employment available to them [is] likely to be more exploitative and unrewarding than sex work…

Abigail Stepnitz of “trafficking” profiteer group The Poppy Project refused to accept that; she said that “the police need to be more creative about how they find [victims],” presumably by “creating” them out of ordinary sex workers as South Korean “authorities” do. Perhaps that’s what Ms. May really wants: a vast pogrom which will make Operation Pentameter look like a Boy Scout Jamboree, resulting in the arrest of thousands of sex workers and their being labeled as “trafficking victims” no matter what the reality and despite their protests. After all, it isn’t like there are any real problems the British government could be spending money and effort on.

I had an uncle who came over from a communist country. In his home country he told me that people who did things like farm pigs were too scared to report low numbers. So, they report extra pigs, then the people further up, would report even more extra pigs, for similar reasons.

So, you ended up will all these phantom pigs on the books that weren’t going to be feeding anyone.

Given that I’ve never met a policeman who didn’t want to make busts, I can only imagine that the English police are feeling a bit like those pig farmers now.

The government prefers to think of spending £100 billion on nuclear submarines, and £80 billion on a railway from London to “the North”: apparently, for those in London, Manchester is the new Pillars of Hercules, the end of the known world.

This is off-topic, but maybe Krulac can answer this question. I know that on nuclear submarines, the air is recycled so the submarine doesn’t have to surface until it reaches port. Is that possible on submarines that use other sources of power? If not, it’s a damn good reason (political correctness aside) for having nuclear submarines.

Is it wrong for me fantasize about doing naughty things to Tammy Bruce? She’s on TV right now and God – I would “do” her in six milliseconds!

OH … you had a question? **Krulac slaps himself back into reality.

Yes – the answer to your question is Yes, you can recycle air on any submarine including conventional ones. To “recycle” air you only need two things … a source of O2 and a means of removing CO2.

1st – you have the CO2 scrubbers that use AMINE to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. When you go down on a nuke sub – you will note a peculiar “smell” – that’s Amine – it permeates everything on a ship. I used to put my civilian clothes in a plastic garbage bag and seal it up so they wouldn’t smell like Amine. Girls – even paid ones – HATE that smell. Also – a secondary means of scrubbing is via Lithium Hydroxide canisters – used only for emergencies though when the scrubbers are down.

2nd – there are two sources of O2. First is the O2 Generator … it’s also called “the bomb”. This thing takes sea water (H2O) and separates the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. They hydrogen is temporarily stored in a storage tank – which is why we call it “The Bomb”. Concentrated hydrogen under pressure = bad things but we will discharge the Hydrogen overboard occasionally to keep things from getting out of hand. Still … a lot of subs have an “Emergency O2 Generator Technical Manual” permanently “chained” and within quick reach of the operator for times of emergency …

IT’S A COPY OF THE BIBLE!

Second way to produce O2 is via O2 candles – light ’em off in a hopper and they will release O2 as they burn down.

The real trick is “throttling” O2 production – you don’t want too much – you don’t want too little. It’s possible to do quite easily with the O2 generator – but with candles – there’s no storage. Fortunately we didn’t use candles very often. The Officer Of the Deck is responsible for supervising O2 levels and making adjustments from hour to hour. Still, usually after a week underway – there was not enough O2 in the atmosphere to light a cigarette lighter – and people used a soldering iron to light their smokes. You could breathe just fine though.

You can really control the attitude of the crew by manipulating O2 levels. On station, when we didn’t want a lot of people up and about making noise – I’m absolutely positive the OOD’s throttled the O2 level down to make the crew passive and quiet.

But Korhomme was complaining about an expensive nuke fleet. I agree with him actually.

The US Submarine Force is 100 percent nuke now – the nuclear officers took over the force – exterminated all the conventional officers.

I was on BOTH a nuke ship and a conventional one. There is a role for diesel boats. They are cheaper, and … THEY ARE QUIETER. A Diesel submerged normally runs on battery – that’s an order of magnitude quieter than a nuclear propulsion plant and all the support systems.

Additionally – there are now “closed loop” diesel systems – you can run a diesel engine submerged now without having to surface and snorkel. They simply make storage for “air” for the diesel to run on. I’m not familiar with this method – and the early experiments by the Brits and Russians resulted in quite a few EXPLOSIONS but I’ve heard this has been perfected now.

“Closed Loop” systems would mitigate the one big disadvantage conventional subs had over nuke – ability to submerge and stay submerged indefinitely.

Ozzies point the way! With Collins class! I love that boat it’s an ASS KICKER of a submarine! I think this is a Youtube of the RIMPAC exercise where they ate our lunch. I was on a cruiser working to find the Collins – the way they describe this is absolutely how it went down for us when they kicked our asses!

Yeah, we ‘got’ one of your carriers in a RIMPAC with one of those if I recall. I bet whoever set the pickets got a good chewing over that one.

The problem with the Collins is the maintenance. It was practically a prototype design when they put them into production and the bugs have never really been fully sorted. We’re flat out keeping half the fleet in running order at any one time and they’re a huge drain on the navy budget for a country our size.

Another advantage nukes have over diesels is refuelling. If your enemy has decent intelligence they can probably get a fair idea of at least their theatre of operations from who is fuelling up where and when.

But I think the big argument over Trident replacement in the UK isn’t so much the power plant as the armament. I reckon if you’re going to have a nuclear deterrent subs are probably the go. It’s not your first strike capacity that’s going to deter a nuclear armed enemy.

The question for the UK is really whether they want/can afford a credible independent nuclear deterrent. If so, they probably need to replace the Tridents before they fall apart any more than they already have.

I think SSBN’s should be nuclear. When I say there is a role for conventionally powered boats – I’m talking about the fast attack role.

I believe the Collins was the first sub to use a “conformal array” sonar – or you guys may call it a “distributed array”. Thing is – the typical sonar sphere on most western submarines cannot passively detect range to a target because the hydrophone staves are placed so closely together – there’s no bearing offset when a contact is detected to determine range. Well there ARE some “deduced” methods of determining passive range – like Ekelund Range, but they are never 100 percent accurate and, depending on the person doing the math – could be wildly off.

But the conformal or distributed arrays inserts enough offset between the sonar sensors so that range can be calculated quite naturally using bearings measured on different staves placed far apart along the submarine’s hull (and not just the bow sonar dome).

Virginia class has incorporated the conformal design now. I have been trying to get some engineers to incorporate it into our sensors too. They cry like babies saying it’s too hard!

I imagined that diesel-electric submarines could only power along when they had an air supply from the snorkel, meaning that they could only travel just below the surface. And that, when submerged, the electric batteries had enough power to propel them but not to power an oxygen generator. So, such subs had to surface from time to time to ‘accumulate’ oxygen, before diving again. Whereas nuclear subs had to much power that they could travel underwater, without the need for oxygen, and simultaneously make oxygen. Am I wrong?

O2 candles don’t consume power – so if a conventional sub wants to conserve battery power – simply turn off the O2 generator and burn candles.

Like I said above – there is supposedly “closed loop” diesel systems now so you can run the diesel submerged (the diesel is nicknamed “Clyde” on American boats and the O2 generator nicknamed “Bonnie” … and also “The Bomb”. The O2 Generator is considered more dangerous hence it gets the female nickname).

The early “closed loop” stuff done by the Brits was using HTP (High Test Peroxide). HMS Explorer and HMS Excaliber were used as the test platforms. Their crews nicknamed the boats “HMS Exploder” and “HMS Excruciator” because of how dangerous they were.

If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again. It’s amazing the way that government officials can come up with blatant lies and not get called on it. Here in the US we have a goal of “being objective” in journalism which in practice amounts to quoting people on both sides of a controversy without calling out either side for lies. Makes telling blatant lies very easy indeed. See: Swiftboating.

I still ask cui bono? Who benefits from the lie of sex trafficking in the North America and Western Europe?
It took as years to figure out that the chief beneficiaries in the war on drugs were the private prison system (one of the few growth industries since 1981); the GOP in the South and old West (where tens of thousands of blacks and Hispanics have been disenfranchised, allowing whites to maintain control even if they are a minority in terms of numbers); and industries that make use of prison labor as the cheap (U.S.) slave labor alternative. Hidden in the drug war benefits is a large scale CIA involvement in drug trafficking world-wide, proceeds from which are used to fund various “black ops” they can’t get past Congress. The FBI and DEA may have caught the corruption bug, given the massive methamphetamine crisis that we are seeing in the heartland. I believe that the real reason behind the failure to decriminalize marijuana at the Federal level is various Federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies receiving money from these operations.

In “sex trafficking” it’s 3 groups: “rescue industry” groups make tons of money, prohibitionists get a pogrom against whores and governments get to restrict immigration while pretending to be “humanitarians” instead of racists.

But you left out the two most important groups in your “drug war” theory: government (which gets an excuse to expand the police state) and the drug cartels who pay politicians to keep it illegal, thus increasing their profits.

I did mention CIA as a certainty in terms of handling drugs, and the FBI, and the DEA as possible, even probable, co-conspirators: I suspect most of the big “drug busts” are of groups who don’t pay the right people in those organizations (and probably others) money. I know an ex-cop friend of mine hates the Feds, calling them corrupt beyond measure. The CIA has been running the heroin trade since the late 1950’s. We know that crack was foisted on the ghetto by the Reagan White House to reduce the number of black and Hispanic voters. Methamphetamine seems to be being used for the same purpose in white rural communities.
I will posit a suspicion that just crossed my mind:that there is a fourth group who is waiting for a time when “victory” is declared as being in sight–the way Bush 41 did with drugs in the early 90’s. At that point, we may actually see real human trafficking begin, just as we saw the drug war fall apart as soon as Clinton took office.

I know that getting the big-money contributions out of politics would go a long way to reducing government corruption and basic dumb-ass policy. I just don’t know how to do that, since any policy changes have to go through that corrupted, big-money system.

I hope it doesn’t come to that; I hope that capitalism can evolve and thrive like it did nearly a hundred years ago. But I’m afraid it might.

A full century ago, capitalism was such a mess that about half the world decided to give an untested system called communism a try. That’s how f’ed up capitalism was in the 1910s. THAT form of capitalism is as dead as the communism it spawned, and is no more missed by the vast majority of the world than is the spawn.

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